Split a Mail Merged document into SEPARATE documents with custom file names [No Coding]

hi everyone Nicholas Buffet is here from Sunnyside for us back with another video tutorial and this tutorial like the one that I've previously done just recently is about mail merge and all about breaking up a merge the document into individual files with custom file names now just to clarify a merge document essentially is the result of having a template letter for example or a mark sheet which I'm going to be using and I want to customize that marksheet for my students by putting the student's name at the top and I want to be able to save the smartsheet of each student as an individual file like I've got here okay so each Student's name for their marksheet and that way I can just use that marksheet to do my marking now the problem with mail Emoji is usually we have a data source let's say where the student names are and then from there we merge those names to the document so if I've got 20 students and my March is two pages long it's going to generate a long own document of 40 pages two for each student with their name at the top at the beginning of each Mark sheet that makes a very long Mark sheet well it makes a very long document and essentially what you have to then do is break down that document into separate units and then save each one with another file name with the student's name a very tedious process now I've showed you in the previous tutorial which you can find as a link in the description below now we can actually merge directly to a Word document add a PDF with custom file names any file name that we want and to custom folders but that required creating a macro using BB script which I gave you and you just simply had to copy paste however this tutorial is a little bit easier because it takes that merged document and with a little trick that we're going to learn we're going to click on a button and what it's going to do as we can see over there on the on the far of this picture we can see we've got six page Pages there which is my merge document and I'm going to break that up into separate files like we can see in this folder here it's a very simple process only requires a couple of clicks so let's get started okay so from here we can see in this folder I've got a Word document and my data source my data source if we have a look basically contains one column just the student names I'm only going to be adding the names at the top of the mark sheet I don't need any other fields but if you want to add more Fields your you can do and you can import those into your document I only need the student names here I've got my mark sheet this is my master template where I'm which I've already linked to my data source by mail merge I'm going to have a link to my tutorial mail merge again in the description at the bottom so from here if I open this up it's asking me do I want to link to that data source I'm going to click on yes and we can see here here's the merge field which I've merged just a full name and if I go to mailings it'll just have a preview I can see here all the students and all the reports what the Mark Sheets is going to generate so one for each person and each one is actually two pages long so essentially when I merge this it's going to be 24 pages long because if I go to edit recipient list I've got 12 students in total and each one is going to have the two pages generated for them okay so here's the trick before you actually merge this document before you actually go to finish a merge and click on edit individual documents we want to go right to the beginning and this is where the beginning of the document is and that's what it's going to decide where it's going to actually create the individual documents I want to go right to the beginning and I want to go to home and I want to click here on heading 1. I don't have to type a heading I don't have to give a heading I just need this first line here to be heading one and that's where word is going to decide later on where to break the the long document into individual documents now here's the trick the first thing that must come after this heading one must be if you want to have the child's name as the as the file name or if you want the parent name or whatever it must be the name so it's not as versatile as the previous tutorial which I've given you but if you do follow this by a name then it's going to put that name in because for each document the name is going to be different it's going to choose the name from here if I go to preview then this one is going to be record Lucy franklin.x this one's going to be at lynch.x so it's going to take this name now also the next thing that you have to know is you can't have another heading so if I click here for example and click on heading 1 again then what this is going to do instead of creating 12 documents it's going to generate 24 unique documents so when we actually create this process to break up that long document it's going to break it wherever we've got that heading one so we only want heading 1 at the beginning okay so with that done and then the next thing that follows is the the name I'm going to now merge my document I'm going to go to mailings I'm going to go to finish and merge actually let's just remove that I don't want the preview results finish and merge edit individual documents I want to merge all of the records click OK and here we go it's now merged and it's created this really long document so I've got 12 records uh 12 students two pages each one and that's going to return it you can see down here right down here in the bottom corner it says 2 of 24. so this is 24 pages two for each child so let's say there you go this is Madeline two pages down this is the next one this is Lucy okay now the next thing that we need to do is to save this document in the folder where we want to generate all the individual documents so I'm just going to go to file save as I'm going to go to browse I'm going to go in the same folder where I've got everything else my Marks here I'm just going to create a new folder as well I'm going to say Stu mark sheets my student Mark sheets I'm going to open that and I want to save this in here and I'm just going to pull this uh merged dock this is the the document with the 24 pages or 12 students in click on save so I've saved that now and if I have a look I'll just bring this up over here for you as well we can see that in this folder where I had my uh Mark sheet and my database or my day uh my data here I've got these new folders student Mark Sheets and in here it save that merge dot all right so the next process is this I'm just going to use this in a second I'm going to go to my document and I'm going to go to this I'm going to go to view and I'm going to go to outline now remember I'm in this new document which I've merged the one with all the 24 pages in here I'm going to go to outline View from outline view I want to save the entire well I'll actually want to select the entire document so I'm just going to press Ctrl a on my keyboard that selects everything I'm going to restore this window so you can actually see this process happening in that folder on the right yeah now so I want to make sure all of this is selected I'm going to click here where it says show document and I get this option here create now when I click on create now all I have to do is click on Save and as soon as I click this save button look on this window over here on the right look at that it's just generated those documents for me and the file name is the student name the reason why is because right after the heading so if I close that now I don't need that right after the heading 1 here in my master document I had the name now I'm going to do this again without having that name there so I'm going to type something else so you can see what actually will happen so I'm just going to delete these documents here and I'm just going to do this process again very quickly I'll do this in restored window view so we can actually see that folder over there as well okay so again I'm back to my normal template my master template here my most document I'm going to click before that full name and I'm just going to type here uh dear parent or be a student here dear student and underneath is is the student's name okay now up here in the home section just make sure here in the hope this right before right at the beginning I've got it as heading one there it is there but what's following this heading one is this text dear student okay so now what I'm going to do I'm going to go to uh mail merge or mailings I'm going to finish a merge edit individual documents I want to merge all of them here's my document there it says it says Dear student and then it's got the unique name for each student here 24 pages again that's fine I need to save this document file save as I'm going to go to browse go to my folder into the Mark Sheets Mark sheet merged okay and we can see here on the right it saved my merged Mark sheet this is the one with all the 24 pages now from here I'm going to go to view outline View I'm going to select everything Ctrl a I'm going to click on show document click on create now as soon as I click on save up here we're going to see here on the right my documents but this time can you see it says Dear student one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven and that's because right after heading one it had the assumed so if you want the customized naming for your files you need to follow it with whatever you're going to be putting from that Source let's say it's a student name it might be a reference number whatever you want but if you are pulling um some data like I am here I'm pulling the full name from my data source then each document will have a new full name here which means each document over here will have a unique name based on that data source that's it I hope you've enjoyed this video I hope it actually helps you out and you really do find this useful and if you do make sure you like make sure you subscribe I'll see you again the next tutorial take care bye bye

Channel: Nicos Paphitis

Views: 44,923

Keywords: Microsoft Word, education, learning, Mail Merge, import, csv, filter, merge field, document, excel

Id: MsUpz6docZA

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 27 2022